{"id":66678,"date":"2014-05-15T00:56:47","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T22:56:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/?p=66678"},"modified":"2025-07-02T00:41:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:41:28","slug":"adblock-plus-memory-hog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/adblock-plus-memory-hog\/","title":{"rendered":"Adblock Plus is a memory hog in Chrome and Firefox"},"content":{"rendered":"

The popular Adblock Plus<\/a> extension may be hogging your computer’s memory. Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote published a blog post today explaining why Adblock Plus doing this.<\/p>\n

The problem comes from Adblock Plus loading custom CSS stylesheets<\/a> into every website it loads. This wouldn’t be a problem except for widespread use of iframes<\/a>, which act like separate websites, causing Adblock to load the stylesheet many times.<\/p>\n

Each stylesheet takes up 4MB, which can add up for websites that feature lots of ads with iframes. Even social sharing buttons for Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> are created with iframes.<\/p>\n

\"Adblock<\/p>\n

It’s a bit ironic that Adblock Plus is causing performance issues when it aims to increase performance by not having ads load.<\/p>\n

Mozilla and Adblock Plus are working together to resolve the issue. You can follow the bug report<\/a> to see what’s being done.<\/p>\n

“We’re doing the best we can to figure out what’s wrong and where, then fix it if it’s on our end,” said Adblock Plus spokesperson Ben Williams.<\/p>\n

If you find Firefox<\/a> or Chrome running slowly, you may want to disable Adblock to see if performance improves.<\/p>\n

Source: Nicholas Nethercote<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Follow Lewis on Twitter @lewisleong<\/a><\/p>\n

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